


Mirages of Matchstick Men

by HobbitSpaceCase



Series: MCU Flashmeme fics [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky's memories are a bit disjointed, Catholic Steve Rogers, Community: mcuflashmeme, Gen, Hallucinations, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Steve is his usual sick and fighty self, Week 3, a retelling of a fairytale, single moms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 10:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5783242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HobbitSpaceCase/pseuds/HobbitSpaceCase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of The Little Match Girl starring the Winter Soldier.  It is snowing on Christmas Eve, and Bucky wanders the streets of Brooklyn alone, until he steals a box of matches and decides to light them.  With the lighting of each stolen match, Bucky remembers.</p>
<p>Written for week 3 of the MCU flashfic meme, a retelling of a fairy tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirages of Matchstick Men

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Человек и спички](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11607765) by [fandom_EvanstanStarbucks_2017](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_EvanstanStarbucks_2017/pseuds/fandom_EvanstanStarbucks_2017), [Magdalena_sylar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magdalena_sylar/pseuds/Magdalena_sylar)



> Based on The Little Match Girl, by Hans Christian Anderson. If you know that story, you might notice a certain warning missing from this story. That wasn’t an oversight on my part. The ending is a little different for this than for the original fairy tale.

It was snowing on the streets of Brooklyn. The whole world was cast in blues and greys and blacks, aside for the pools of shaky yellow light from streetlamps, and the warmer patches of light valiantly trying to shine through grimy, frosted windows. When the Soldier passed these windows, he sometimes caught glimpses of smaller, brighter colors twinkling merrily on the branches of evergreen trees.

The Soldier bumped into a man in a nice coat. When they separated, the man’s pockets were lighter by one wallet and a small book of matches. The Soldier could have used the money in the wallet to buy food, but the thought of entering one of the well-lit little restaurants he had seen so far made his breathing accelerate and his stomach hurt. He turned the matchbook over in his fingers. The feel of it brought the taste of strong tobacco to the back of his tongue. _Lucky Strikes,_ he thought, and decided to find a place to strike the matches before he ate.

A pile of rags hiding a dying man took up the first alley the Soldier looked down, but the second was clear of all but rotting food and dirty snow. He settled down cross-legged, distantly grateful for the heavy weave of his pants that kept most of the wet and cold from seeping entirely through to his skin, and pulled out the first match.

When he struck the match against the bricks of the building he faced, it burst into bright yellow flame, cheery and warm against the dirty slush of the alley. Tearing his eyes from the tiny fire revealed that the building wall had gone fuzzy, like the frosted glass windows he passed on the street. As he watched, a scene resolved itself into clarity beyond the wall. A dark haired woman stood in the front room of a small apartment, hemmed in by a kitchen sink and secondhand table on one side, and a tiny living area on the other. She held a small bundle in her arms while a little boy who shared her coloring darted around her legs to open a wooden door.

The Soldier reached out to the woman, but his hand met an obstacle only a few inches away from his face. It was like being in the cryotube: warmth and color visible beyond the glass, but unreachable.

The door opened to reveal a thin, blonde woman. She said, “My name is Sarah; I live just next door, and I wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.” The rest of her words grew fuzzy and indistinct, as the Soldier’s attention was drawn to the boy who hid behind her.

He was a tiny wisp of a child, surely no older than six or seven. His little hands were balled into fists at his sides, and his gaze was fixed to the ground. Still, the Soldier could not help but feel that he _glowed_. This small, insignificant boy was meant for greatness. His thoughts were interrupted by the first boy peeking around Sarah’s legs to get a better look at the blond. “How old are you?” the boy asked. The Soldier could hear the faint echo of something like an admonishment from a mother calling, “James!” in exasperation, but he was watching the blond boy. The little thing had met the bigger boy’s eyes, and his glare was _stunning_.

“I’m ten,” he said. His voice was steadier than a man’s several times his age, and the Soldier was impressed.

The darker boy actually smiled in the face of a glare that would make lesser men cower. “I’m ten too!” he said, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. “Wanna see the book I got before we moved? It’s got pirates! I’m James by the way, what’s your name?” 

The sight faded back to dirty brick before the Soldier could see or hear any more. Desperate to chase the feelings the little scene invoked, he quickly struck another match. The flame turned the wall transparent again, and the Soldier saw the same small room from a new angle. The front door stood directly ahead of him across the length of the room. The room still looked old, but everything had been cleaned and neatly rearranged. The knowledge of what would happen if he got grimy fingerprints on anything drifted through his head, and he was inexplicably glad that the images were unreachable. 

The dark haired woman was there again, and the Soldier’s mind dredged up the word _ma_. She sat in an old wooden chair next to a table with eight lit candles in an unusual candleholder. Her eyes reminded the Soldier of his own eyes, when he saw them once reflected in his cryotube window before the ice took him under.

She and the Soldier both startled at a knock on the door.

The blonde woman, Sarah, was at the door again. The little boy seemed more confident this time. He stood next to his mother and looked up to meet the darker woman’s eyes. “Thank you for offering to watch my son, “Sarah said. “I wanted to spend Christmas with him, but the hospital needs me.” She looked into the room and asked, “Do you not decorate for Christmas?”

The other woman stiffened. “No, we don’t,” she said, tone clipped and hard.

Sarah’s eyes fall on the eight candles in their strange candleholder, and she abandoned her inquiry into the state of decorations. “My son has been looking forwards to seeing his new friend again,” she said. “It has been difficult for him, being held back in school this year with the younger boys. Many of them tease him because of his poor health, but he only has kind things to say of your son.” Sarah smiled, and some of the tension leaked out of the other woman’s shoulders. The Soldier could not blame her. Sarah had a beautiful smile, without a trace of cruelty.

The boy at her side huffed impatiently. “Can I play with Bucky now?” he asked. A scowl had briefly graced his features when his mother mentioned his poor health, but it lightened as he tilted forward, looking ready to dart away from the grownups as soon as he obtained permission.

“Bucky?” the dark haired woman asked. The Soldier heard surprise in her tone.

Sarah’s child rocked back on his heels to look up and meet her eyes. “Yeah,” he said, quite matter of fact. “He said no to Buchannan, and James is a stupid name.” He yelped when his mother reached down and swatted the back of his head. 

“I apologize,” Sarah said to Bucky’s mother. “One of the boys who teases him in school is named James.” The child’s face pinched together in annoyance, but he mumbled an apology of his own without being prompted further. He did, however, tack on to the end of his apology, “James is mean to plenty of other kids, too, and that ain’t right either. I can handle myself just fine, but he’s cruel to anyone littler than him.”

The dark haired woman accepted the apology from both mother and son, then turned to the small one and said, “Bucky’s in the back room, watching Rebecca while she naps.” The image went dark just as the little boy darted into the room, right towards the Soldier. Cold brick replaced the small, warm room and the strange people once again. The second match had also burned down to nothing in the frozen grey sludge.

The Soldier’s flesh fingers trembled as he pulled a third match from the box and lit it against the bricks. His did not recognize how quickly he had begun to breathe, nor the hammering of his heart, till both settled down as the third match brought a new scene even more swiftly than the first two.

He was nearly blinded by light this time, until his eyes adjusted to the brilliant reds and oranges of a sunset over Brooklyn. The light concentrated on a rusty fire escape where two boys sat side by side. They were the same boys from the previous visions, though some time had clearly passed, as evidenced by Bucky, who had _shot up like a weed_. Sarah’s child, in contrast, remained a tiny thing of bird bones and paper skin; he hardly seemed to have grown at all. There was a blanket wrapped round his bony shoulders against the coming chill in the air, though Bucky was in his shirtsleeves. 

Bucky was, as far as the Soldier could tell, in the midst of a dramatic conversation that involved the use of his entire body. “I think he’s planning to propose to ma,” Bucky said, his voice deeper than it had been when the first match burned. He leaned back on his elbows and kicked at one unsteady bit of railing. “They’re both absolutely _gross_ together.” A look of disgruntlement scrunched up his face as he spoke. “I can’t imagine what they’ll be like if we move into his place and they’re _always_ around each other.”

The blond boy gave his friend a stern look and said, “He can’t be that bad. Your ma always seems happier nowadays, and it’s good for her to have someone who cares about her.”

Bucky snorted inelegantly. “Sure, but he’s,” and Bucky paused to sway into the smaller boy’s space and whisper in his ear, “he’s a schmuck!” The word ended in a mischievous giggle, and the small boy reached out one thin arm to shove at Bucky’s shoulder.

“Don’t think I don’t know when you’re using language you ain’t supposed to be using, James Barnes, just cause I don’t know what it means,” he said, but the strict words were belied by the soft look in his eyes as he watched his friend.

“Like you’ve never used a bad word in your life,” Bucky shot back, but he too smiled as he spoke. “Anyway, I guess we also might get a Christmas tree this year. I wouldn’t mind that. You’ll have to show me how to make those popcorn strings you always have on your tree.”

A sharp gust of wind blew down the alley at that moment, snuffing out the third match and the fire escape both.

Fear and loss curled through the Soldier’s chest, and he grabbed up the rest of the matches in a handful and struck them all across the wall. They blazed up like sunshine in his metal hand, and a kaleidoscope of images flashed in a dizzying array across the bricks.

Bucky grew taller and broader, loosing the awkward, gangly limbs of adolescence and growing into a graceful and charming man. Sarah’s child grew less, though his voice deepened and his eyes grew old.

On one stretch of wall, Sarah’s child shivered and coughed beneath a mountain of blankets. Bucky was propped up next to him on one elbow, whispering words in a language the Soldier had never been taught by any Handler. The Soldier’s body nevertheless named the words a prayer, and though he felt Bucky’s terror with an intimacy that confused him, he knew the small boy would not die that night.

Another set of bricks melted into scene of the two boys tucked in a corner of a wood-paneled room behind an evergreen tree decked out in popcorn and paper snowflakes. Bucky stood perhaps an inch below the tallest height he would gain in any matchstick image, and he held a small bag of oranges in one hand while a blush stained his cheeks. “I don’t care if you didn’t get me anything, just take the damned oranges,” he said. The smaller boy’s blush was far more impressive than his friend’s. (The Soldier could not decide if the blond had only another few inches to grow, or another foot, though he could figure out the origin of neither thought.)

The Soldier tried to take in everything the matches showed, but in some scenes he only managed to get glimpses of bright light; a dim room with a single bed; an older, dirtier Bucky in an old army uniform; a glimpse of pale skin accompanied by an inexplicable twist low in his stomach; scene after scene of Bucky patching up pale knuckles and rubbing salve around blue eyes, before the matches burnt away. Eventually, none were left, and only the brick wall remained in front of him.

The Soldier laid his flesh hand against the bricks, barely feeling the scrape of them against his numb fingers. Exhaustion weighed upon his shoulders, and he wished for the blond boy to watch over him so he could sleep.

The snow had stopped while he used up his matches, and the filth of the alley would hardly be the worst place the Soldier had rested.

Above the alley, only thin tendrils of clouds remained. A few stars burned in the sky, far colder than the matches that had all burned down to nothing. While the Soldier contemplated the empty matchbox, the crunch of boots on slush and ice announced a flesh and blood arrival into his space.

The man at the mouth of the alley was tall. The light of a streetlamp behind him illuminated thick blond hair and a well built frame; as he approached, the Soldier could make out piercing blue eyes. “Steve,” he said, a final puzzle piece clicking into place in his mind.

The man halted for a moment, then crouched down on the balls of his feet. “Yes, of course, sweetheart,” Steve said, only inches now from the Soldier. “I’m here to take you home.”

“Steve,” the Soldier said again, and smiled, and allowed the world to go black.

For several long seconds, there was silence in the alley as Alexander Pierce contemplated his armful of passed out Winter Soldier. Finally he sighed. “One of these days,” he whispered to the unconscious thing in his arms, “You are going to be more trouble than you are worth. Lucky for you, this is not that day.”

In the morning, only the burnt down stubs of the matchsticks remained to tell of the alley’s temporary inhabitant. By midmorning, even those had been carried away by rats, leaving no evidence of the man who had sat there on Christmas eve, unknowingly devouring his own scattered scraps of memory of a time when he had known happiness, and warmth, and kindness long ago.


End file.
